


Endless Grey

by Areiton, VerdantMoth



Series: Together Alone [2]
Category: Marvel
Genre: Give mah boys hugs, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Reincarnation, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, kinda? is this reincarnation...?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 08:02:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17721296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton, https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: There’s no tricks to be played in the endless fog, with nothing but his clothes and his heartbeat. And he’s not even bored anymore. He’s empty. Numb. Maybe this is how The Grey really works; as a final death.Heart beat slow, blink. Breath in shallow, blink. Forget to exhale, blink, blink. Fade to nothing, shadow.Peter is also fading. His winter-wood eyes dull and glassy. His skin fading into the grey-sepia of this forgotten wasteland.





	1. Chapter 1

Loki exist in a place he calls “The Grey.” He wakes up, or he blinks, or maybe he breaths, but with one beat of his heart, Thanos’ hand is tight around his throat and he is closing his eyes against Thor’s grief and his neck aches, snaps, everything gone.

The Grey seems a fitting afterlife for him, all things considered. He’s just surprised he’s never been here before. Not that he has ever died before, not totally. But the best lies do hold a little bit of truth, and Loki isn’t exactly the most stable of living beings.

He’s here now though and, dammit, he’ll have to tell Thor he was right, but there’s not much to do in this absent space.

He alone here, and he’s not sure if this is supposed to be Valhalla or Hel, or some weird inbetween. It’s not cold like people talk about, but it’s not warm either. It’s nothing, in a way that makes his skin crawl. It’s not existence; it feels like being forgotten.

Hel almost seems kinder.  
+  
Sometimes he hears… things. Voices, footsteps, metallic echoes he can’t explain, distant thunder he won’t. Time in The Grey doesn’t seem to exist.

Loki doesn’t know how long he’s been here, or if any time has passed. He doesn’t appear to have aged, what he can see of his skin, feel in his bones. His hair grows though, long and wild, and it seems to be the only change in this damn stagnant place.

It’s making him mad. In all sense of the word. He thinks sometimes he sleeps, other times he knows he doesn’t. He blinks and it’s centuries and he sighs and it’s seconds.

He is alone in a shadow-fog world; more alone than the orphan boy he was ever was.  
+  
And then one day he isn’t.

Between the wailing and the footsteps and the thunder, those strange and distant echoes, Loki hears sniffling. Soft, the kind buried deep in the chest, but so real he almost collapsed with relief.

He can’t see, at first, who weeps. Then, like so much in The Grey, he blinks and all is revealed.

He remembers Tony’s boy. The kid looks young, so fucking young, washed in the grey-sepia tones of this nightmare nowhere.

Loki doesn’t rush to him, not really. Movement is just different in The Grey. “How long?” He asks and his voice is so loud and not at all rusted with disuse.

Peter looks at him, dumb earthy eyes watery and broken. “How long what?” He asks apprehensively.

Fair enough, Loki has probably earned that. “How long since I…”

Peter hesitates with the kind of apprehension Odin once wore, when he feared Loki’s rage at the truth. “Days,” the kid answers softly, gently, but with finality.

“Impossible,” he scoffs, and he blinks and The Grey moves him elsewhere.  
+  
Tony’s pet is persistent. Always appearing beside Loki in The Grey, despite never being wanted.

“Do we sleep?” Peter asks, “cause after all this I could use a nap.”

Loki sneers at him and wills The Grey to make one of them vanish, but The Grey has never liked him much.

Peter does doze, as much as he can standing in nothing. His hair, like Loki’s is the only proof any time passes, but it’s much slower, curling gently about his ears and neck.

Sometimes, rarely, Loki graciously allows the boy to curl against him. Mostly they are silent, sitting in the fog, waiting.  
+  
“They’ll get us back,” Peter tells him. He’s confident and foolhardy, like all human teens, but Loki can’t summon the energy to be cruel.

“You, yes,” he answered and he doesn’t add _Tony will never let you go_. He thinks Peter already knows this.

There’s a bruise, vibrant on the back of Peter’s neck that never fades. Loki jabs at it once, and watches as Peter shudders, blinks away.

He’s gone so long Loki thinks the kid either found his way back, or never existed here to begin with. But then Peter is leaning against him, eyes puffy and red rimmed. He doesn’t say anything. He blessedly doesn’t cry, but he doesn’t say anything either, and the fucking thunder and the footsteps and that _god’s damned metallic clanging_ grow everlouder.  
+  
“Where d’ya think the others are?” Peter asks. He’s braiding Loki’s hair which has spontaneously stopped growing. Loki is loathed to admit it, but he likes the contact, likes the delicate ways Peter combs his fingers through the knots, scritches at his scalp.

“They’re here somewhere,” Loki answers brusquely. The kid is no fool, he’s heard their whispers.

“Why haven’t we seen them?” Peter asks quietly.

Loki doesn’t answer him. He closes his eyes and leans into the fingers. The Grey is a cruel master, lacking rules and explanations.  
+  
They kiss, once. No accident, no build up. Peter looks at Loki and he’s searching for Tony, for any reminder. Loki has done the same, has pressed his fingers into Peter’s scalp begging the hair to go blond. His magic doesn’t work here though.

Loki initiates it. Peter knows what he’s about to do, doesn’t stop him. But he’s stiff beneath Loki’s hands, lips cold marble, somehow chapped. Loki presses, holds, tries to mould his body against too little muscle and it’s…

The kid taste okay, a little sad and a lot salty, but Loki blinks away, regret and shame and rage burning in his gut.

Peter finds him later and he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t touch Loki, but he sits by him for a long time, pretending Loki doesn’t have tears streaming down his own face. He’s crying also, fingers wrapped around his neck and digging into the bruise that never fades.

Loki carefully, cautiously, wraps an arm around Peter’s shoulder and Tony’s prodigy collapses into him.  
+  
Sometimes, rarely, Loki almost dreams. It’s never long and never solid, but for brief moments he can see Thor in Tony’s lab. In his bed.

They’re strange, cruel images. And he never says anything to Peter, but the kid knows. He doesn’t let Loki touch him after the dreams. He doesn’t vanish, not usually, but he also doesn’t chatter incessantly in Loki’s ear.

Loki is careful with him in those moments, unsure of how to soothe the ache, but knowing it needs to be done all the same.

“They’ll be close now,” Loki sighs. “Tony’s certainly had enough time to sort this out. Probably got distracted with his shiny toys. But you’ll see, tomorrow or the next day they’ll call you home.”

He almost believes it, but he never imagines it for himself. Only for Peter. After all, Thanos killed Loki with his hand, but not with a snap.

And Loki doesn’t deserve anymore chances anyhow.  
+  
Once, what feels like seconds and millenniums after they arrive, Loki takes Peter to The Grey equivalent of bed. Peter’s more involved this time, and Loki half thinks to ask what dream he saw, but instead they peel off the clothes they died in.

Clothes they’ve worn every second of whatever eternity this is.

They’re quiet, robotic as they undress. Hands moving in practices but unfamiliar motions, struggling with buttons and leathers and laces and clasps.

Peter doesn’t explore and Loki barely touches. They fit together wrong. Temperatureless skin lacking coarse hair and fine muscles. A body that moves in smooth rhythms instead of half-contained ferocity. Gentle touches and harsh nails and bites that leave no bruises.

Loki can’t even remember how it ends, except that he’s alone in The Grey, redressed without moving. Peter stays away a long time and Loki’s vomit never lingers. It’s punishment, perhaps.

The list of _what for_ is too damn long to count.  
+  
There’s no tricks to be played in the endless fog, with nothing but his clothes and his heartbeat. And he’s not even bored anymore. He’s empty. Numb. Maybe this is how The Grey really works; as a final death.

Heart beat slow, blink. Breath in shallow, blink. Forget to exhale, blink, blink. Fade to nothing, shadow.

Peter is also fading. His winter-wood eyes dull and glassy. His skin fading into the grey-sepia of this forgotten wasteland.

Loki, for all he’s done wrong in his life, can do one last thing right. He can keep Peter vibrant, until Tony brings him home. “Tell me about your Man of Iron.”

He says it loftily, but Peter hears the worry. So the boy talks. Movie nights with classics and chocolate popcorn. Long weekends spent oily in the lab, sweaty in the sheets. He tells Loki about the future he’d planned out, the one he hadn’t quite told Tony about. But he’s left sticky notes and webpages up, little clues.

“Would you tell him now?” Loki asks at one point.

And Peter is young, hasn’t aged a bit here, despite the curls around his cheek, but his eyes are heavy and adult and serious when he says, “It’s going to be the first thing I say to him. Tell him he has to marry me someday.”

And then Peter surprises him. “Will you tell Thor?”

They’d never kept them a secret, but he’s surprised at how much Peter gleans from all Loki’s doesn’t say. “You’ll just have to tell him for me.”

Loki is getting uncomfortably used to weeping.  
+  
The Grey is changing. It’s hard to explain how nothing changes, how fog shifts, but it does. Loki wanders through warm and cold spots, and sees shades of blues and greens and reds and yellows and once, purples and silvers.  
The echoes are closer, more distinct. Sometimes they can make out specific words. Never the whole conversation but airy half-breaths that sound like brother and never forget and so close.

They dream their names. He can feel Peter’s bones in his hands, fine and delicate, but sturdy in his palm. He can feel Peter’s heart against his chest when he holds him.

They can almost see Midgard, translucent and faded, like memory overlays around them. “They’re close, Loki!” Peter says, awestruck and desperate. “We’ll be home soon.”

Loki pets those damned curls and doesn’t remind him of the home he had that’s been destroyed. One of them should get their happy ending, their ever after.  
+  
Moving gets harder in The Grey the more solid they get.

They huddle close to each other, hand in hand, head on shoulder, and almost long for the days when breathing was muscle memory. The air is acrid and thick, bitter. Loki is exhausted. Feels like he could sleep for a century, and the circles under Peter’s zircon eyes say the boy feels the same.

Waiting sucks, when you can’t tell how long it’s been.  
+  
Peter half stands one day, eyes wide and mouth agape. “Tony,” he whispers. His shoulders tremble and his breath hitches. “Tony!” He calls and his hand quickly slips from Loki’s.

He looks solid even as he feels less so to Loki. But Loki grabs his hand once more, clutches it tight and begs Peter to turn around, for just one more moment. “Tell him!” He cries. And Peter looks at him confused. “Tell Thor, everything. I remember him. I miss him. I loved him.” His voice cracks, and he shuts his eyes against the burn. “Tell him of the dream I had for us.”

Peter hesitates, body pulling towards Tony. “But you’re coming with me, right? They’ll bring you home too!”

His endless, childish, _cruel_ faith hurts more than Loki’s neck snapping and his windpipe caving. And then his palm is empty and the boy is gone and The Grey is cruel and dismal and nothing once more.

But for a moment, one single, vicious moment, he can feel Thor’s hand in his palm, can hear the excitement as he cried “Brother!”

Fuck The Grey, and it’s glamour tricks.


	2. Chapter 2

It hurts. Dying. Dissolving into nothing. It hurts like nothing has ever hurt before. Ben bleeding out in front of him, the fear and worry in May’s eyes, the crushing weight of a building and Mr. Stark’s disappointment--none of those hurt like fading into nothing, slow enough that panic takes hold, rips through him, rips him apart like whatever Thanos is doing, a galaxy and more away. 

It  _ hurts _ and he clings to Tony, clings like Tony can save him because Tony has  _ always _ saved him. 

Dying  _ hurts. _

But it doesn’t hurt as much as the desperate devastation that is the last thing he sees in Tony’s eyes. 

~*~ 

He goes somewhere. 

It’s somewhere that feels like nowhere, a lonely empty nothing that stretches into forever, and Peter stares at it, stares  _ into _ it, and feels terror and panic clawing at him. 

He screams, but it comes back muffled, almost silenced, like he can scream and no one--not even himself--will hear it. 

He screams and screams, until his screams fade into sobs, desperate and shaking, and exhausting. 

~*~ 

“Stop that,” a voice snaps, and he looks up. 

Loki looks--

The same. And different. His hair is long and messy, his clothes battle rumpled, a livid ugly bruise on his throat. 

His eyes though--his eyes look mad, more than a hint of insanity gleaming there, and it would make Peter hesitate, but he can feel Loki, the first thing he’s been able to feel since he landed in this damnable place, and mad or not, he isn’t going to turn that away. 

~*~ 

It takes what feels like ages for Loki to ask and Peter tells him, tells him that it’s been  _ days _ , less than a week, since his death, and Loki’s eyes flare with impotent fury, a rage that makes Peter falter at his side, and it’s then that Peter realizes--time doesn’t work quite right here. 

~*~ 

The grey is exhausting. 

He doesn’t expect that, doesn’t really understand it. There’s nothing here, no way to measure time and even when he tries, it moves on him. There’s no way to work out the endless excess energy--not even chasing after Loki who seems as determined to keep him close as he is to run from Peter--and yet, he’s tired. 

He’s so tired. 

He leans on Loki’s shoulder, a shoulder that feels wrong and sharp, that smells faintly of decay and cold instead of grease and sandalwood, and he doesn’t sleep. 

But sometimes, he dreams. 

~*~ 

They’re unchanging, and Peter hates that. He doesn’t want his dusty suit that is a constant reminder of Mr. Stark, doesn’t want to see the blood on Loki’s clothes, or the bruises still livid on his throat. 

But there is a bruise, ever present and unfaded, on his neck, and Peter presses against it, welcomes the sharp throb of pain that reminds him he’s alive--or something not quite dead--reminds him that somewhere in the universe, Tony is trying to save him. 

~*~ 

This is what he knows: 

The Grey is constant and inescapable. 

Loki protects and hates him. 

Tony Stark will tear the universe apart, to bring him home. 

~*~ 

“What do you miss?” he asks, and Loki’s fingers, petting through his hair, still. He peers up at the god. He can usually read Loki’s mood, can tell when a question will drive him away or seduce answers from him, but not always. 

Loki is tricky, a liar and not fond of sharing bits of himself, which Peter thinks is ridiculous, given where the hell they are. 

But he doesn’t mind too much. Loki says so much more than he thinks he does. 

“Sunshine,” Loki says, finally, his voice thick and heavy. 

He looks down at Peter, eyes gleaming with unshed tears. “And you, little one?” 

Easy. So easy. He misses their lab, and Tony pressed against his back, chin hooked on Peter’s shoulder, eyes avid and proud as Peter shows him what he’s working on, hands possessive on Peter’s hips. 

He misses leaning against him while waiting for coffee, and waking up coccooned in warmth and heavy, protective arms. 

He misses Tony. 

Peter smiles, “Flying.” 

~*~ 

They don’t talk about Tony. 

And they don’t talk about Thor. 

Once, when he was feeling very petty and his eyes glittered with that creeping maddness, Loki pressed against the bruise on Peter’s neck. 

It felt  _ wrong, _ the pain infuriating and Peter blinked away, away, away. 

He huddled in on himself, lost in the gray and he didn’t scream, not this time, not anymore--screaming did no good. 

He just stayed there, listening to the whispers, to the metallic clanging. He chases the noise, for a time that seems not long at all. 

But when he finally goes back, and sees relief in Loki’s eyes--he wonders how long he actually was gone. 

He wonders how long they’ve been waiting. 

~*~ 

Loki is touch starved. 

It’s not surprising--Peter is too, a need that thrums under his skin like the need for Tony, ever present and aching, but almost  _ almost _ something he can ignore. 

He’s careful, comes to Loki needy and sweet--the god looks at him and sees a child, an innocent, and for all of Loki’s faults, he has always been fond of children. Peter thinks that’s why he hasn’t shaken Peter for good. 

So he sleeps against Loki’s chest, and braids long black hair and bumps his shoulder when they’ve been sitting too long, green eyes lost in thought. 

He touches Loki, presses close and familiar until it  _ is _ close and familiar and it’s not what he wants or who he wants, but he thinks if he has to exist, undying, there are worse beings to be trapped with. 

He says as much, once, and Loki’s lips twisted sardonic and he pressed that smile to Peter’s forehead. “Likewise, little one.” 

~*~ 

Loki kisses him, once. 

Only the once. 

It felt...wrong. Wrong in a way that made the grey feel  _ right. _ He’s  _ cold _ and it makes Peter shiver, something he doesn’t expect in this place where temperature and time and  _ life _ doesn’t exist.  He tastes like ash and blood and rotting meat, and Peter feels panic tugging at him, and a sob crawling up his throat, and he’s about to run, away, away, but Loki goes first, gone so quickly Peter stumbles, hits his knees--and then he cries.

He cries for everything he’s lost, and for his friend, and how fucking lonely they both are. 

He cries for Tony, and Thor, and the whispers in the grey that he can’t find. 

He cries for a kiss that tastes like death and a universe destroyed. 

~*~ 

There are things they don’t speak of--like the kiss--and things they speak around. 

The dreams that aren’t dreams--they speak around them. 

The first time it happens, he wakes with a shout caught in his throat, and heaves, useless and dry, for long minutes, flashes of  _ them _ moving behind his closed eyes. 

Thor’s big hands on Tony, the way the god moved, the tears in Tony’s eyes and the biting words he spat. 

Loki reaches for him, and Peter skitters away, away, revulsion crawling along his skin, and he wants to  _ go _ , wants to let the grey take him--but Loki looks just as devastated as he feels, something shattered in those mad green eyes, his whole body  _ thinner _ than before. 

Peter stays. They don’t talk, and Peter stays. 

~*~ 

Sometimes, after he dreams, he hates Tony. 

Sometimes, he’s glad for it, that Tony isn’t alone. 

Mostly though, he just aches with lonlieness, aches to go  _ home. _

~*~ 

“He’ll come for you,” Loki whispers, when he thinks Peter is sleeping. “He’ll come for you.” 

Peter wants to say,  _ So will Thor.  _

But he knows Loki isn’t ready to hear it, won’t ever be ready. So he traps the words behind his teeth and believes them for Loki. 

~*~ 

They comfort each other. 

That’s what it was meant to be. 

It’s not a comfort, and after--after, he can’t stand himself, can’t stand the grief in Loki’s eyes. 

He goes, loses himself in the grey mists, chasing voices he can never catch and thunder that doesn’t feel real. 

~*~ 

Loki feels less solid, when Peter leans against him. It worries him. 

The questions Loki asks, about the future, and the way he refuses to believe he has one--that worries him too.

It hurts to think about, but it feels good too, like cleaning a festering wound. 

Tony will tear the universe apart, to find him. 

And when he does. When Peter gets to go home--

“I’m going to tell him I love him,” Peter promises. 

~*~ 

Sometimes, Loki’s eyes go distant, like he’s hearing something Peter can’t. And sometimes, Peter tenses, echoes that sound like Tony drifting on the mist, and Loki’s vacant, ancient stare, makes him think Loki can’t hear it. 

He wonders what it means. 

He hopes it means they’re close. 

Loki pets his hair and holds him close, and Peter knows what that means--knows he thinks he’ll be alone soon. 

~*~ 

This is what he knows: 

The Grey is constant and inescapable. 

Loki protects and hates him. 

Tony Stark will tear the universe apart, to bring him home. 

He will not leave Loki here to die. 

~*~ 

When it happens, it  _ hurts _ . He screams, and he can hear, gods he, he can  _ hear _ and it feels so present, so real that he wants to curl up and hide. But he can hear the muffled echo of Loki’s pleas, the resignation there, and he snarls, screams his name. 

For an endless eternity, he hears Thor shouting and feels  _ stretched _ between two places, and sees flickering, ancient, mad-touched green. 

Peter  _ yanks _ , and they fall, fall, fall out of mist and nothing onto the shining white floor of Tony’s lab and the world comes rushing in. Loki is staring at him, eyes wild and disbelieving, and all the promises of a future, the plea that Loki had pressed out, they hover between them like grey mist. 

Tony’s arms are around him, tugging him close, and Peter chokes out, “Tell him yourself,” before he’s pulled into the arms he’s waited an eternity to feel, and familiar, so right lips press against his hair and he closes his eyes. 

“I love you,” he says, the first, last, only thing that matters, and hears it echoed, repeated in refrain, in Loki’s desperate voice. 

Peter smiles. 


End file.
